Daily Mail

The Herald-Mail Newspaper's regional distribution includes the following areas located in the Washington County, Maryland Tri-state area: Maryland: Washington and Frederick Counties Pennsylvania: Fulton and Franklin Counties West Virginia: Berkeley, Jefferson, and Morgan Counties Virginia: Frederick County The Herald-Mail publishes two daily editions--morning and evening. The classifieds remain the same in both editions and cannot be ordered separately.

State employees should be suspicious To the editor: I would like to inform the state employees, if they don't already know, that their health benefits open enrollment, usually held in October to November, is being delayed until Nov. 11. The reason we're given is that they don't know what the cost will be. Funny, but I have worked for the State of Maryland for 23 years and this has never been the case. It has been said that the increase will be 17 percent, but we don't get any increase in pay. Very odd and coincidental that this is an election year and our lieutenant governor is running for governor, but we will not be getting our health benefits information until after the election.

andrear@herald-mail.com Darrell Kepler, an award-winning editor at The Herald-Mail, died at his Hagerstown home Saturday after a three-year battle with cancer. He was 53. "You couldn't not like Darrell," said his wife, Deb. "With Darrell, what you saw is what you got. He had a very refreshing, simple outlook on life that was grounded in the important things and was not cluttered with pettiness and things that don't matter in the end. " Kepler "asked very little of life," Deb said.

Editor's note - Please be as brief as possible when calling Mail Call, The Daily Mail's reader call-in line. Mail Call is not staffed on weekends or holidays so it is best to call Mail Call during the week. The Mail Call number is 301-791-6236. You are welcome to leave a recorded message on any subject, but some calls will be screened out. Here are some' of the calls we have received lately: "I am responding to the Mail Call where people were having trouble with their phones in Sharpsburg.

Giving needy children access to good schools When Chinese-American parents in San Francisco challenged a school desegregation plan that had been place for almost 20 years, some expected a long and expensive court action. What emerged instead - and what bears watching - is a new plan designed to mix students not by race, but by their parents' incomes. According to Richard D. Kahlenberg's account in Education Week, parents challenged the old rule which limited the enrollment of certain ethnic groups in the schools because it limited access to Lowell High School, an elite school which students must apply to attend.

School merger backers cannot just sell savings The proposal for school consolidations in Washington County continues to move forward in fits and starts, with school officials promising change and budget savings. So far they've failed to make the case that consolidated schools will be as good or better than the ones they would replace, although School Board Vice President Bernadette Wagner has started to do that. In a Monday night meeting with parents in Hagerstown's West End, Wagner said that the new schools would be four-round schools, which means that they would have four sections of each grade.